April 7, 2011

A recount in [the Wisconsin Supreme Court] race... seems inevitable, and it is not clear who will ultimately take the seat on the Wisconsin bench. But if this expensive and nasty race ends up in protracted litigation, it could undermine public confidence in both the judiciary and Wisconsin’s electoral process, especially if, as I expect, supporters of Prosser raise ugly allegations of voter fraud....

Don't dare say fraud!

While the fraud allegations [in various recent elections] remain stuck in the public’s mind, no proof of any systemic fraud has been unearthed. Instead, close examination of elections show, time and again, that our election systems are not perfect – but this is due to human error and not fraud....

[I]f the Wisconsin Supreme Court race goes into extra innings, I expect things to become especially contentious and partisan.

To become contentious and partisan? It's been ridiculously contentious and partisan here in Wisconsin since mid-February. It's hard to understand why the Republicans should stand down now. Prosser was way ahead and would have easily won if Democrats hadn't turned what was supposed to be a nonpartisan election into a referendum on the Republican governor they hate. It took Prosser a long time to realize he had to fight like a politician and not just sit quietly modeling traditional judicial demeanor. Outrageous, dirty politics was played against the old jurist, and he had little idea what to do about it. Now, his advocates are supposed to play nice so things won't get ugly? We've been in uglyville since February.

If Kloppenburg can eke out a victory, I wouldn’t be surprised if Prosser supporters play the fraud card. Professor Ann Althouse already raised the specter of fraud in her final post on election results last night. I am sure that others will trumpet now-discredited allegations of voter fraud in Wisconsin, especially about alleged fraud in heavily Democratic and minority communities.

Now discredited? See, that's the meme among Democrats. There is no fraud. You're not even supposed to talk about "[t]he possibility of some fraud" — which was the phrase I used in my 11:55 p.m. post on election night. Note that I wasn't even making an accusation. I was just trying to sign off and go to bed. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day. But the mere mention of fraud triggers the reaction: Don't talk about fraud! Fraud?! There is no fraud! Everybody knows there is no fraud, and anybody who mentions it is, by that mere mention, an agent of discord and deceit. This is an effort to delegitimatize the very interest in the problem of fraud. I expect a label to emerge, a label like "birther." Ugh! She's a frauder.

It is the voters of Wisconsin and those who depend upon the state supreme court’s system of impartial justice who are sure to suffer.

So... because past claims of fraud have been "methodically debunked" — have they? — we should stop even looking for fraud? We'll only suffer if we keep checking for cheaters? This sounds way too preemptive to me. I've spent the last 2 months in a vortex of political ugliness and saw it grafted onto the judicial election. I saw frantically impassioned protesters grasping at the symbolism of this election and building an intense shared feeling of entitlement to shift the politics of this state. I heard the phrase "by any means necessary" more than once.

In this context, Prosser proponents have every right to drag us through the search for fraud one more time. I hope they don't find it, and Professor Hasen can add this new example to his next there-is-no-fraud column. But there's a 204 vote margin in this crazy election. We need to feel confident that the outcome is correct.

Just curious, Ann, if you're fulminations over voter fraud will extend to this curious case of votes being found in a highly Republican county, or is it just fraud when Democrats mysteriously find votes?

The desperate dems will do anything to regain power. Add that to the allegations of ballot destruction. An investigation should take place. Hard to do in a climate where democrats say "how dare you" at every turn. I don't trust the dems and they certainly have a reputation for fraud in WI.

plus: via Christian Schneider at The Corner:"Yet without the electoral bloodbath in Dane County, Prosser would have won Wisconsin by a comfortable 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent margin. The non-Dane County Prosser vote actually exceeds the 52.3 percent Walker received statewide in November. It wasn’t the state’s voters rejecting Walker’s agenda — it was Dane County’s government workers attempting to keep their paychecks intact."

I've said this several times before. I'm black and I live in Racine; that gives me access to see things that most other Wisconsin residents can't or don't see.

I've personally witnessed voter fraud...I've seen people given names of registered voters who hadn't voted and use those names to cast ballots. To say that fraud doesn't occur, especially in Milwaukee and certainly in Racine, is absurd.

I will attribute nearly all irregularities to human poll workers doing the best they can do. I accept that a perfect system is not feasible. In this context, nearly any outcome is the correct one, given the system we have.

"On an estimated more than 10,000 ballots in Dane County, Wisconsin, where the state capital Madison is, voters selected only a pick in the Supreme Court race, while leaving even the hotly contested mayoral and county executive choices blank. That raises red flags for election experts..."

Voter fraud in Wisconsin? It's laughable to suggest it doesn't occur. No serious person doubts that it has. The 2004 presidential election had a ton of it. The only reason it wasn't investigated was because Kerry's win here didn't matter.

Finding any actual fraud is important but what seems clear in many close elections is that the voting systems are so inefficient and poorly designed and run, that suspicions are very natural.

Perhaps its attractive to attribute results to fraud when its known to happen but its also easy to explain "unusual" events by invoking very likely causes: less than proficient workers, varied and unreliable technologies and irregular requirements for voting. What could go wrong?

while leaving even the hotly contested mayoral and county executive choices blank.

The County Executive Race was not at all hotly contested. Parisi won with -- what -- 70+% of the vote?

I don't even think the Mayoral race -- which was not voted on by well over half of Dane County -- was hotly contested. The choices left me pretty ambivalent, so much so that I didn't bother to get a new ballot when I mistakenly voted for the old incumbent vs. the new one.

A lot of these allegations of irregularities on Tuesday strike me as throwing things against the wall to see if they will stick.

Moreover, I read that there nearly 1800 municipal election employyes who count and manage the election process. How many of these clerks are part of the government unions. Do they have a direct personal stake in the election? How many of them were protesting at the capitol or in their home towns against the union bill.

Even if 99.9% of the clerks are legit, that still leaves a few corrupt ones to decided the election.

This is going to get very ugly.

Also the whole Suprement Court is tainted on this. How can they make a ruling on the recount that people would accept. They should appoint a commission to decide it.

"I don't even think the Mayoral race -- which was not voted on by well over half of Dane County -- was hotly contested. The choices left me pretty ambivalent, so much so that I didn't bother to get a new ballot when I mistakenly voted for the old incumbent vs. the new one."

Agreed. I have plenty of friends who said "I'm voting Soglin or I'm voting Dave, but either way it's fine" I felt that way, too.

SteveR said...Finding any actual fraud is important but what seems clear in many close elections is that the voting systems are so inefficient and poorly designed and run, that suspicions are very natural.

Perhaps its attractive to attribute results to fraud when its known to happen but its also easy to explain "unusual" events by invoking very likely causes: less than proficient workers, varied and unreliable technologies and irregular requirements for voting. What could go wrong?

4/7/11 9:48 AM

Who are you going to believe, democrats or your lying eyes? See the comment above from James. Ocam's razor: fraud being a long standing tradition among democrats is always the most probable when democrats win by the margin of fraud.

Perfectly consistent with the dishonesty that has characterized WI Dems all along.

There were no death threats, until we saw the death threats. There were no swastikas, until we saw the swastikas. There was no vandalism, until we saw the vandalism.There will be no fraud, until we see the fraud.

And none of it makes a bit of difference to ideologues like Hasen.He and his ilk will contnue to deflect, distract and distort all throughout the recount process. It's what they do.

Knowing how easy it is to vote fraudulently, how badly so many wanted to win this "at any cost", and how important is is; what does it say about someone who does not want to investigate even the possibility of fraud?

It seems this blog is becoming a vortex of hyper ventilation, but I wonder if the ads in this race, and the tone of the election were any worse than what Gableman, not a third party, ran against Butler? The court was in a 3/3 deadlock over his ethical violation. In Gableman's case his ad made false statement about guess what-- Butler's involvement in a sex offender case. This raw emotion has continued to affect all of our elections along with the exaggeration of voter fraud--

That's the thing I keep coming back to. Trust in the election process hinges on that process being administered by neutral parties - or at a very minimum, parties without a direct financial stake in the outcome.

Again, it's always one side trying to prevent measures which would make fraud more difficult. It's always one side taking allegations of fraud and calling those who point it out racist. It's the same, every time.

In the Minnesota Governor's race last year (about 1.9 million votes), the hand recount produced a net change of 100 votes. There were also a 1000 ballots challenged but a law suit was never filed because 1000 was not enough to oeverturn the election.

In the Franken/Colemen recount in 2008, the challenges resulted in almost 2000 additional votes and overturned the 200 vote lead Coleman had on election night into a 300 vote victory for Franken.

The voting regulations seem designed to facilitate fraud while putting up a veneer of protection. That needs changed. As a conservative, I never want to win an election via fraud, I'm not so sure my liberal friends feel the same. They do say stuff like "But I still think Obama is awesome." "By any means necessary." and a lot of "yea but". when confronted with an ideological obstacle.

The labels "liberal" and "conservative" do actually fit on the value of rules.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has vetoed three previous photo ID laws, even though Democrats such as state Sen. Tim Carpenter of Milwaukee supported them saying he's seen "eye opening" public support for the idea.

That backing is based on real evidence. In 2004, John Kerry won Wisconsin over George W. Bush by 11,380 votes out of 2.5 million cast. After allegations of fraud surfaced, the Milwaukee police department's Special Investigative Unit conducted a probe. Its February 2008 report found that from 4,600 to 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.

Much of the problem resulted from Wisconsin's same-day voter law, which allows anyone to show up at the polls, register and then cast a ballot. ID requirements are minimal. The report found that in 2004 a total of 1,305 "same day" voters were invalid.

The report was largely ignored, and just before the 2008 election the police department's Special Investigative Unit was ordered by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day.

In January of this year,(2010) Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the city prosecutor overseeing election issues, complained that the Milwaukee Police Department was stalling its investigation of voter fraud in the 2008 election. "Sadly, [the prosecution of] several probable cases of genuine voter fraud were harmed by that delay," he wrote in an email to a city elections official that was revealed by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. A spokesman for the Police Department responded that "we have investigated every case that has been forwarded to us."

since no ID is required, there was no doubt at least a net 200 Felons or illegal aliens who voted for Democrats in the election. IN Minnesota it was found that 350 ineligible felons voted in the Franken Coleman election.

Voter fraud would be relatively easy to pull off. When I go to my polling place all I state is my name. The poll workers look up my name in their records, then read back my address to me. They never ask me to state my address first, and of course they aren't required to ask for identification.

While they are doing that the entire page of the voter list is visible and you can easily see who hasn't voted. Its simple to memorize a name or two from the list. Maybe in other parts of Wisconsin the process is more secure but I doubt it.

And although I live in Racine I get my haircuts at a barber shop in Kenosha. I happen to know at least two of the barbers live across the state line in Illinois but they vote in Wisconsin.

James, I hope you've contacted the Prosser campaign, and sympathetic media, with your eye-witness testimony. We need to expose all evidence of the fraud which almost certainly takes place in every WI election (same-day registration and lack of photo ID practically guarantees it will happen).

Voter fraud is a venerable, Democratic party tradition. They used to be laugh about it, but now that it's become politically incorrect, they try to pretend it doesn't exist....like every other politically incorrect idea or fact.

Hey, Garage - And what about the question of human nature? Why have so many Wisconsinites taken a vow of poverty? I mean, why would even one minimum wage worker give over a portion of his or her minimum-wage paycheck to a union teacher already raking in $100,000 a year?

The state’s top election official will face seven felony counts, including voter fraud, perjury and theft, a special prosecutor said today.

Secretary of State Charlie White was accused of intentionally voting in the wrong precinct during the May 2010 primary, a potential felony.White turned himself in at the Hamilton County Jail Thursday afternoon and was released after posting $10,000 bond.

My father was defrauded in the 1960 election. He lived in Chicago and the fraud worked like this. When he showed up at the polls, the workers asked that he produce the registration card that had been sent to them several weeks before. In prior elections you did not have to show the registration card. The fraud was that registration cards were not actually sent to most men in precincts that favored Nixon (like my father). My mother, who also lived in Chicago did receive a registration card. Because of that he was not allowed to vote. That is how the Democrats stole the 1960 election.

Well actually the 16 Kerry workers were never sent to jail because Milwaukee's election records are kept so poorly.

More from WSJ:

According to the report, this loophole was abused by many out-of-state workers for the John Kerry campaign. They had "other staff members who were registered voters vouch for them by corroborating their residency."

The investigative unit believed that at least 16 workers from the Kerry campaign, and two allied get-out-the-vote groups, "committed felony crimes." But local prosecutors didn't pursue them in part because of a "lack of confidence" in the abysmal record-keeping of the city's Election Commission.

I was being charitable, at best. Being a republican in a democratic state, fraud in these types of circumstances is low hanging fruit. Being a government employee, however, I can't dismiss the utter imcompetence of the system. I've seen way too many really simple things get fucked up to think gathering millions of votes from thousands of precints won't have problems.

Hey, Garage - And what about the question of human nature? Why have so many Wisconsinites taken a vow of poverty? I mean, why would even one minimum wage worker give over a portion of his or her minimum-wage paycheck to a union teacher already raking in $100,000 a year?

You're missing the point.

Garbage is one of the tax eaters. He wants... he gets. Scam artist mentality.

And who is it that is consistently against voter ID laws? Why, it's those who know they would profit from voters not having to show ID to vote. Sooooo, you just have to check who is against voter ID laws and you will have a handy dandy guide to cui bono

"While they are doing that the entire page of the voter list is visible and you can easily see who hasn't voted. Its simple to memorize a name or two from the list. Maybe in other parts of Wisconsin the process is more secure but I doubt it."

When I worked at the polling place, I would hold my hand over the address book so people couldn't look. The person in charge told me to quit doing that.

Shouting Moron,You don't live in Wisconsin. This election doesn't even pertain to you. Democrats can run whatever campaign they want--it's not like spending in this election was much more than the last one for the WI, which was also heated.

Almost Ali said... "…I still don't understand why minimum wage workers in Wisconsin are so willing to sacrifice their own money to support union members who make nearly three times as much as they do."

Well that's the more relevant issue, isn't it? Not the so-far unfounded speculation about fraud.

The public unions and their misguided supporters seem to have a sense that their position, at least on the face of it, is unfair. So, they've tried to cloak it as a civil rights issue. That so many voters seem to have bought that conceit is astonishing.

The public unions and their misguided supporters seem to have a sense that their position, at least on the face of it, is unfair. So, they've tried to cloak it as a civil rights issue. That so many voters seem to have bought that conceit is astonishing.

A lot of us are failing to do our math. Public employee are, what, 20% of WI workers? I'm just guessing. And how many have spouses? Subtract that from the Dem vote total. That doesn't leave a whole lot of non-public employees voting in favor of the Dems.

Madison Dems are voting themselves money from the public pocketbook at the expense of the non-public employees. They feel entitled.

Check every county carefully. While Dane and Milwaukee Counties are suspicious, I want to know what the problem was in Wausau, in Marathon County. At 12:14 A.M. on Wednesday their unofficial web published results showed 32 precincts still uncounted, all in the City of Wausau. Prosser's margin of victory in the county was smaller once those precincts were counted. What took so long? You bet fraud. And the Conservatives need to get their act in gear to prevent the same voter fraud on the Senatorial Recall Elections.

I was being charitable, at best. Being a republican in a democratic state, fraud in these types of circumstances is low hanging fruit. Being a government employee, however, I can't dismiss the utter imcompetence of the system. I've seen way too many really simple things get fucked up to think gathering millions of votes from thousands of precints won't have problems.

4/7/11 10:35 AM

Point well taken. I am of the belief that this constant level of fraud and perception of electoral fraud is a serious cancer for our democracy and that election fraud needs to be taken seriously and investigated and prosecuted seriously and punished very harshly as an example to all. That said I think if the mechanics of voting were farmed out to the credit card companies and one could cast their ballot at an ATM site anywhere within the designated time window a substantial amount of the fraud both real and perceived would be eliminated. The companies have a pretty good system in place as it is (after all the machine is handing out money, your money and they have a liability) it would not be to difficult to chose cast my vote as an option. The audit trail would be far better and being electronic the data would only be transmitted back for tallying after the polls closed so no one could ever know how many votes are needed if a fix was to be attempted and any effort to do so would be rather obvious. It it also has the added advantage that military votes will be counted as it would not be to onerous to have machines not to far from the troops or aboard the larger warships.

But there's a 204 vote margin in this crazy election. We need to feel confident that the outcome is correct.

No we don't. As Chomsky said of the 2000 election:

Given a statistical tie with numerical differences that fall well within the expected 1-2 percent margin of error, the rational procedure would be to select a candidate at random; say, by flipping a coin. That would not do, however. The process must be conducted with appropriate solemnity, and a pretense that issues of grand significance are at stake.

Is this a professor- a professor who wants Academic Freedom! to pursue all manner of dangerous thoughts without repercussions - asking others to not even think this thought?

Is this a professor, who must have privacy in all of his professional communication so he can engage freely in his intellectual pursuits, telling others not to entertain such ideas? Not to talk about it? Because he, protector of intellectual and academic freedom, sees no purchase in it.

it's "of course, there's fraud." it's a close election. wondering how many criminals voted, how many dead people voted, how many unregistered people voted, how many illegals voted, how many out-of-staters, multiple voters and how many non-existent voters voted... It's quite normal to want to strike these ballots...unless you benefit from their existence, which case, you claim there is no fraud.

This is the namby-pamby liberal fantasy: there are all these "poor people" who really, in their hearts, want to be involved in our political process but--urgh!! figuring out how to get registered is so so complicated!! But we really should *want* them to get involved--even an evil Koch Brother MUST agree that the Founding Fathers wished even the most diffident, lazy, unengaged citizens to go to that poll and show the democracy they mean business (power to the people!), therefore we MUST make it as easy as possible for them to vote!

So make 'getting to vote' so easy, even a driveby dummy can do it! I mean, I bet these people have been eagerly following the public debates in any given election: it's just that, you know, that registration thingie, that was really hard to find out about, so complicated, yadda yadda; but if I could just go in to the polling place on Election Day and they'd just set it up nice for me so I could participate in the political process then I'd have a goofy smile on my face all year and people could just look at me and tell, "Gosh, isn't this a great country or what?!"

I mean, even if I've been dead for thirty years. Powezr to the zombies!!

Garage: I am sure you are right. More businesses will migrate to Wisconsin when they are convinced that Wisconsin has strong unions, higher taxes and a government that is large enough to imagine and enforce regulations that the government thinks should be in place. Those are the very things they are waiting for and I am sure that the triumph in the election of Tuesday has the strategic planning departments of many companies plotting a move to Wisconsin. Car companies in particular will be eager to move from the warm and low tax south to Wisconsin so that they can be nearer to the high quality worker who displays such a strong work ethic and whose originality in puppet making and sign design is apparent.

plus: via Christian Schneider at The Corner:"Yet without the electoral bloodbath in Dane County, Prosser would have won Wisconsin by a comfortable 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent margin. The non-Dane County Prosser vote actually exceeds the 52.3 percent Walker received statewide in November. It wasn’t the state’s voters rejecting Walker’s agenda — it was Dane County’s government workers attempting to keep their paychecks intact."

And without the suburban zombies of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties, Kloppenburg would've won much bigger than she did. So, what your point again?

"On an estimated more than 10,000 ballots in Dane County, Wisconsin, where the state capital Madison is, voters selected only a pick in the Supreme Court race, while leaving even the hotly contested mayoral and county executive choices blank. That raises red flags for election experts..."

Its only fraud if it is done by Republicans. If the Democrat wins then it is a victory for the masses by ensuring groups traditionally under-represented are better captured. Like the dead, cartoon characters, and imaginary friends...

John Fund just reported that there are more than 200,000 voters still on the rolls who have moved or died but not removed. The state was supposed to have cleared these earlier but hasn't done so. That, along with the law allowing voters to register at the polls with no more proof than another person to vouch for them. Many of such registrations have been found to have false addresses.

Oh, they'll be talking about "fraud." Just look at Prosser. Within 12 hours of losing, he was out begging for money. Even though the state will pay for the recount, he needs some more millions to hire a squad of Republican lawyers to make up some more crap.

"On an estimated more than 10,000 ballots in Dane County, Wisconsin, where the state capital Madison is, voters selected only a pick in the Supreme Court race, while leaving even the hotly contested mayoral and county executive choices blank. That raises red flags for election experts..."

This argument annoys the hell out of me. I vote in every election. And in every electron I leave more races blank than I vote in. If I don't know anything about that race, I don't vote in it.

The Democrats tried this bullshit in Florida. They actually wanted Gore votes on ballots that had votes for Democrats, but had left Gore blank.

I'll entertain a thoughtful argument that this pattern indicates reasons to look further, but that's as far as I'll go.

I'm very affected. But I don't vote on direct personal interest. Or, rather, I think what's best for society is best for me, in the long run. I believe this strongly.

The current budget is a perfect example. We got to this mess by previous administrations overspending, over promising, and kicking the can down the road rather than living within our means. 80% of something is way better than nothing. But if the fiscal mess of the governments, State and Federal, is not cleaned up, nothing is what we are going to have.

Professor Hasen taught my Remedies course at Loyola. He was blogging about Election law around then already, if not soon after. He always seemed to me like a reasonable man. But refusing to entertain any possibility of fraud under these circumstances just because its occurrence was debunked once before is anything but reasonable...

*******The latest vote count in the state Supreme Court race in Winnebago County indicates incumbent David Prosser is leading Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in votes.

A tally compiled by The Associated Press Wednesday and used by news organizations statewide, including the Journal Sentinel, indicated Kloppenburg was leading the race by 204 votes. Figures on Winnebago County's website are now different from those collected by the AP.

Winnebago County's numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887. The AP has 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg's 18,421.

The new numbers would give Prosser 244 more votes, or a 40-vote lead statewide.

An editor at the AP said the news service became aware of the discrepancy in the past hour. The AP last checked figures with Winnebago County at 10:14 a.m. Wednesday, according to the AP. The county adjusted its figures at 2:27 p.m

"Walker's budget will actually spend more, not less. So basically you are getting blamed, and fucked, and not getting what you voted for in the first place."

Are you talking about the rump budget? (From here to June 30th?) I'm not that interested in that. If you're talking about the next bienium, I'm interested. Please provide me links.

On the topic of the state picking up the "employee's" portion of pension cost, that's an unwinnable battle. Sure, it may be, as is claimed, that at some point in the past wages were traded away for the benefit, but if so that was a poor choice because it's unsustainable. It's called the employee's portion, for Christ sake. The name dooms it from the get go. Most people's analysis will not proceed past that point.

May I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no fraud in the Wisconsin election. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we will ever admit. But all election officials are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find any boxes of votes at all anywhere in their home, they're to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up. And, finally, a non-partisan judiciary is right out.